Stargirl of the Edge

Ch 45 - Two Museums

Olivia and her mum Liz have come down from Alderley Edge to London as guests of Liz's wealthy media heiress friend Marianne Smythe-Jensen. They are staying in Chelsea at one of her houses. They have come to London to make contact with influential people and try to drum up support for Liz's campaign to free her husband Dennis, who has been kidnapped abroad. It's the second day of their visit. Liz and Marianne are going out together to visit people but Olivia has other plans.

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Sunday was going to be a major day for the networking campaign. Visits to offices, organisations and influential people in their workplace would be on Monday, but today, Liz was going to call in on a list of key contacts at their homes. Marianne would accompany her. With the Range Rover and driver, she would be able to get to quite a few people. They were a mixture of her own associates and Marianne’s. They included former diplomats, MPs, journalists, businesswomen, businessmen, experts in hostage negotiation and lots more. She had scheduled an hour or two with each.
Olivia knew that Liz was going to ask her along and Liz already had a good idea that she would have other plans, and she had.
“Mum, is it okay if I just do my own thing today?”
“Oh yes, of course darling! You don’t need to come along! No need to worry, just leave it to me! There are no photo shoots today, so no need for you to come!”
“Oh thanks, Mum,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief.
“So what have you got planned?”
“Well, you know, a while back you were talking about that museum? And then there’s that other one that Dad is always talking about…”
Olivia wanted to walk but Marianne insisted on driving her there.  The driver steered the big black Range Rover along streets with large white houses, fashionable shops, past an Underground station, and then he stopped to let her out.
“OK, Livvy text me!” said Liz, giving her a hug, “and have a marvellous day! See you later!”
Olivia went to the pedestrian crossing and gazed at the magnificent white building, richly ornamented with a grand entrance.  It was the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Her mum had talked about it many times and had said what an absolutely marvellous and wonderful place it was. Of course, she said that about lots of places, but as Olivia entered the main hall, she quickly realised that in this case, she wasn’t exaggerating.
Wandering through the museum, she had never seen so many beautiful things: statues, jewellery, artifacts, paintings and sculptures of all kinds. There were exhibits from all continents and eras, but she was most interested in the section on Ancient China, with its paintings and statues. There were many scrolls and she spent some time looking at them. She looked for some of the characters her teacher’s sister had sent the meaning for and she found one or two of them.  It was still very difficult to read and understand what was on the scroll but at least she felt she had taken a step closer to understanding.
She decided that the Victoria and Albert Museum must be the most beautiful museum in the world. 
And the unusual thing about it was that it was a museum founded by a couple who were in love. She imagined the museums some of her mum’s friends might set up: The ‘Debbie and Darren Museum’ or maybe the ‘Babs and Brian Museum’, full of tasteless lampshades and leopard print cushions, no doubt. Olivia looked at a painting of the young Queen Victoria and her handsome husband Prince Albert, who died in 1861 aged 42 of a disease that today would be curable.  Nearby was a statue of the older queen, a widow. She had spent the rest of her life in mourning, usually wearing a black piece of material on her head. Her heavy eyelids and humourless expression said a lot about her state of mind.
But there was another museum Olivia wanted to go to, the one recommended by her dad. And that was only just on the other side of Exhibition Road. It was the Science Museum. This was magnificent too but in a completely different way. She was dazzled by the space displays and the exhibits about energy and light, the structure of atoms, and more.
She went to the displays about astronomy. She was particularly interested in the life cycle of stars. Most of the information was already familiar to her, but there was always something new to learn and she discovered a surprising number of new facts. It broadened her knowledge, filled in some of the gaps and stimulated her curiosity further
In her mind, she associated the Science Museum with her father and the Victoria and Albert Museum with her mother. The two museums, standing opposite each other, represented the two sides to her, which she found difficult to reconcile.
Whilst the V&A was the most beautiful, the Science Museum was the most exciting. Surely it was possible to reconcile the beauty of art with the excitement of science?
She walked back across to the V&A and browsed some more, then back to the Science Museum, treating them almost as two departments of the same museum.
She knew that her dad would be very pleased that she had visited, just as her mum would be full of enthusiasm for her visit to the V&A.
And then something even more powerful struck her.
The day before, they had gone into some of London’s most expensive clothing stores and Marianne had handed over a small fortune.
And yet the V&A was full of clothes and other items of art that were worth far more and yet, except for special exhibitions, entry to the museum was free!
And it was the same at the Science Museum. Nothing could be more valuable than knowledge, and yet all the knowledge on offer was free of charge.
Later in the afternoon, she sent a text message to Liz and shortly after closing time, the Range Rover appeared and Olivia hopped in.
She had no bags full of expensive items. The most valuable thing she had retained from the visit to the V&A and the Science Museum was in her head. The knowledge, excitement and inspiration she had found in the two museums were the most priceless gifts of all.
On Sunday evening they went to a restaurant on the Kings Road. Not long after they arrived, Liz received a phone call. It was from Hippy Dave at the house.
“Hey Liz, you need to get back here!” he said.
“Why, what’s happened?”
“Oh nothing bad. Wait till you see it! You’re not going to believe it!”
“What is it?”
He wouldn’t say. Liz told Olivia, and she hoped that they would soon be going home. She was missing her room and of course, her dog Jessie. Olivia had a few bites of the meal and then asked to go back to the house again.
Soon she was opening up her laptop, relieved to be able to gain access to the internet, and to read.
Marianne walked with Liz back to the house and then got a taxi back over to Holland Park. Liz came into the house and popped her head around the door.
“Hi, Livvy are you all right?”
“Yes, Mum.”
“I think I’ll head off to bed now, we’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
“Can I just stay in the house tomorrow? I’m not feeling very well. It’s come.”
“No, Livvy, you need to come with me, there will be photo opportunities, and you might need to do interviews.”
“Okay then, but is it okay if I just watch a bit of television before going to sleep.”
“Is there anything interesting on?”
“Mmm, not sure!”
Olivia knew very well there was an interesting programme on but she didn’t want to mention it.
“Don’t stay up too late now Livvy!”
“I won’t, Mum!”
Soon it was ten minutes past midnight, and she was sitting in front of the TV as the sad and majestic theme music came on, set against a dramatic image of the night sky, with amateur astronomers silhouetted on the ground at the bottom.
When The Sky at Night came on, she felt close to her father. It was as if he was just sitting there in the room next to her.  The subject of the programme was the Transit of Venus. This astronomical event had heralded his disappearance. She felt uncomfortable with it. But she watched. The old astronomer sat in the room with his young team of professors and their guests. He only added a comment occasionally, speaking with a slurred voice. He seemed quite ill. Then there was a report from a distant island with pictures of the Transit of Venus, the tiny black dot crossing in front of the gigantic yellow disc of the sun. She was transfixed by it, and dreamed that one day she would go into space and see the event with her own eyes. But the next Transit of Venus wouldn’t be until later in the century. There were plenty of other things in space to explore.
At the end of the programme she turned off the TV. She felt a deep sadness her father wasn’t there, and began to cry.
She knew she should go to sleep but after watching the programme, her head was full of thoughts about space, planets and stars.  Wiping the tears from her eyes, she opened up her laptop and began to gaze again at the pages from the book, including the diagrams and the text in Chinese. Now she could understand a lot more of it, thanks to the help of her Chinese teacher, but it was like a jigsaw puzzle with many of the pieces missing. The diagrams didn’t seem to match anything she could recognise in the night sky. She turned her head to the left and then to the right, to see if the stars matched any constellation she knew. They didn’t seem to.
It was all a puzzle but now she realised she had to give in to her tiredness. She quietly went to her room climbed in between the soft, clean sheets and soon fell asleep.
The next day began with her mum knocking on the door loudly and telling her to get up. As she awoke, she became aware that there were remnants of a dream she had had. She was sure her dad had been in it. She tried hard to remember the dream, but it had faded.
Her mum called again from downstairs. Today, they were visiting two government departments and there was an appointment with their local Member of Parliament at the House of Commons. They both put on their new clothes and made a stunning mother-daughter team.
At the various meetings, Liz did most of the talking, whilst Olivia stayed quiet, smiling and, whenever possible, checking the internet on her iPhone. From time to time, in the Range Rover between visits or in a quiet moment, she would look again at the photos she had taken of the book, enlarging them to look at the characters and diagrams. Then, bits of her dream came back to her, and she realised it had been about the diagrams and star charts.
She got out her iPhone and opened up one of the diagrams. Carefully, she turned the phone upside down. The chart turned upside down as well. She turned the phone again carefully, keeping it as flat as she could. She looked down at the constellation. ‘Oh my goodness!’ she said to herself.
They were about to arrive at the House of Commons, so she put the phone away.
In the evening, Olivia walked round to the Chinese takeaway and bought the same food as Liz had done three nights earlier.
She took it back to the house and ate as much as she could, actually not very much.  After another meeting at a nearby hotel, Liz arrived back later evening, heated up the remainder of the food in the microwave.
Meanwhile Olivia was looking at the charts. She was nodding. It was starting to make sense. But she wouldn’t tell her mum, not yet. She had to make sure she wasn’t making a mistake.
The next day it was time to go home. Olivia said goodbye to the house. They had originally planned to go back in the evening, but Liz was very curious to find out what Hippy Dave had been talking about. So was Olivia. The tickets Marianne had bought for them entitled them travel in First Class on any train at any time of the day, so they decided to take a morning train. They would leave the clothes they had bought at the house and wear them again the next time they were in London, which was bound to be soon.
Liz persuaded Marianne to let them take the Tube back to Euston. They walked to Sloane Square, took the District Line to Embankment and changed to the Northern Line. There had been delays on the Northern Line earlier due to a signal failure, but now, as stated on the information displays, it was just a temporary problem, a good service had been resumed and they arrived at Euston with plenty of time to spare.
They left on the 10.40am train from Euston and it arrived in Wilmslow just before 12.30. They took a taxi back to Alderley Edge and first stopped off at the Jolly Wizard to check up on progress. The landlord confirmed that there was something amazing waiting for them back at the house.
A few minutes later, the taxi drove down the lane, up the drive and there, in front of them, was the most remarkable sight they had ever seen.
Hanging over every tree, over every branch, over available overhanging object, people had left red banners with apples. Each one with an individual message of support and solidarity. Most were in English, a few were in Chinese.
The banners made the house look like a Chinese palace during a festival. They each went round to check who had left the banner. Friends, contacts, some relatives, people they didn’t know at all, they had all come to register their support in the most visible way, a magnificent expression of friendship, solidarity and love.
Jessie was barking loudly inside the house but as they walked across the gravel, she sat behind the door and whined.  It was good to be home.

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This is one of my favourite chapters in which Olivia spends time visiting museums, watching the Sky at Night and researching on her laptop. These are my genuine opinions about the two museums, the V&A and the Science Museum. The idea of a red banner with an apple was suggested by a Chinese contact of mine.